


Bedshaped

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Established Relationship, F/M, Illness, M/M, Marriage, Old Age, Sherlock and John's Greatest Hits, When Two Men Love Each Other Very Much, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:34:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Decline of Doctor John Holmes Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedshaped

**Author's Note:**

> I was greatly inspired for this fic by the song Bedshaped by Keane.
> 
> This is a **major** work-in-progress.

After nearly a quarter of a century together, Sherlock sat vigil next to John who now slept through most of the day and night. John was no longer well enough to stay in their cottage in Sussex and had been moved into a hospice facility—there wasn’t much more time, they both knew that but neither had the courage to acknowledge it fully to one another. It had been just over a year since John had been diagnosed and five months since the doctors told them that treatment would no longer lead to recovery. All they could do was make John comfortable. At the thought, Sherlock briefly lifted John’s hand and kissed his knuckles and then continued running his thumb in circles over the back of his palm. At fifty-nine years of age, Sherlock had lived a life of addiction, adrenaline, and love—love being the most rewarding and surprising of the three.

Sherlock’s addictive personality was apparent even when he was a child. Every time little Sherlock would read a book the subject would become his new obsession, extracting as much information about the topic as possible and then leaving it in the dust once another fixation arose. During the later years of his childhood, his fascination revolved around crime and crime scenes after reading about the death of Carl Powers, which was  _obviously_  a murder but alas, the met refused to listen to a  _child_. The ever incompetent Yard, what was new?

As a teenager Sherlock’s addictive personality shifted to substance instead of information, relying on nicotine to calm his anxieties and weaken his appetite—health effects be damned. Only a few years later, during uni did Sherlock find his predilection for cocaine and that spurred another addiction entirely. For five years his cocaine addiction spiraled from out of control to  _really_  out of control only to be forced into recovery by Mycroft. A subsequent relapse and arrest followed, but for the most part Sherlock had been clean for thirty years.  _God, had it really been that long?_  Since then there had only been one slip up after a terrible row with John that pushed him to stay with Harry for nearly three weeks.

Crime and John Watson have been Sherlock’s dependency for the past thirty years, both of which directly relate to the other vital aspects of Sherlock’s life. His love for solving the puzzles of crimes surely started way before Sherlock could ever be taken seriously; even his mother and father scoffed him for his outlandish theories and gruesome preoccupation. Although this passion for deduction never completely left the man it was put on the backburner while he got high.

The spark that ignited the fire that is Sherlock Holmes was officially lit the night that he was arrested by a young DI by the name of Gregory Lestrade. It was also that night that Sherlock accurately solved two murders and was responsible for a finding a vital lead in another. Lestrade was so impressed that he told Sherlock that if he got clean there could potentially be a spot for him on cases. Motivation enough for Sherlock—he stayed clean this time and officially worked his first case at the age of twenty-nine, catching a serial rapist that the Yard was too dense to hook. The chase, the game was what sent his adrenaline pumping. It was like cocaine, only superior, cheaper, and a less likely addiction to get him arrested or sent away by Mycroft again.

John entered Sherlock’s ever dangerous life five years later. Sherlock would say that the  _love_  chapter of his life started there— and this was not because he was in love with John when they first met but because John was the sole reason Sherlock realised he  _had_  a heart in the first place. This wasn’t a quick and dirty realization, but a gradual consciousness that progressed over the first two years John lived and associated with him in 221B. The man was a marvel, although he wasn't quick to tell John that. For so long Sherlock sought to keep a harsh exterior, didn't want to acknowledge that there was something different about John that made his life infinitely better. But finally he was able to admit it both to himself and John. They hadn’t always been in together, in a relationship that is, no, that didn’t occur until  five years after they had met— after John’s wife Mary passed away and Sherlock, who had been presumed dead for nearly three years, had come back into John’s life. It had been a whirlwind after that, although it hadn’t been easy, not as all. 

But here they both were, twenty-five years after the start of their beautiful friendship, their illustrious partnership in a situation that they had never faced before. One would think that the pair had faced everything possible—from a psychotic consulting criminal, explosions, a faked death, and murderous cabbies. Sure they’d sat at each other’s bedsides holding hands while the other was recovering from injuries they had sustained thanks to criminals and the like or minor illnesses that they had ignored for too long. No, what was new was the outcome of all of this. Sherlock and John had built a home together, lived in said home for nearly six years, but John, fragile, pale and sunken into the hospital-style bed would never step foot inside the cottage again. They would never sleep in  _their_  bed together, nor would they enjoy those luminous summer afternoons where Sherlock worked around the bees while John, whose sandy grey hair blew in the slight breeze, sat on  _their_  bench and wrote stories all about the days of old. 

John brought along his journal and hoped to continue writing but because he had been feeling more worn out than usual, he had yet to write a single word.  _The Decline of Doctor John Holmes Watson_ , he thought. He would never speak those words aloud to Sherlock, but he thought them day in and day out.  A year ago, he told himself, had been the beginning of the end— he had lived and loved through the middle of the end, but now here he was, getting ready for  _the_  end. 


End file.
